500 Words About Gregory

Gregory is a minor character in the novel I'm currently working on. But even minor characters have their stories. Here's the first part of Gregory's.

Gregory never wanted to go fight in Vietnam. All he ever wanted to do was surf.

He had grown up in a sun-drenched paradise called San Diego, never more than a ten minute walk from the beach. He had learned how to swim before he'd learnt to read, and considered the former to be a far more valuable skill. He got a paper route when he was thirteen, and saved his nickels until he had enough to buy a secondhand surfboard. From then on, he'd be on the beach every morning except Christmas and Easter.

By the time he was eighteen, he'd gotten good enough so that he could teach youngsters and tourists the rudiments of surfing. He had a couple spare boards he'd rent out and then give lessons for three dollars an hour. His girlfriend made lemonade and fish tacos she'd sell to the same tourists for a quarter apiece. At night, they'd go back to their little lanai, smoke weed and make love. They were never going to be rich, but just maybe, they could have been happy.

And then The Letter came, requesting him to serve his country in a far off place he had never heard of, much less cared about. Many of his friends and peers were getting similar letters. Some responded with a fatalistic patriotism. Others fled to far-off Canada; some made for the much closer Mexico. The surfing was awful in Canada, so Gregory started packing for Mexico and trying to teach himself Spanish by listening to Mexican radio stations.

His sister stopped him. Coming to his little lanai the night before he was supposed to leave, two nights before he was supposed to report for duty, she shamed him into service.

So Gregory, with tears in his eyes, hung up his surfboard and packed for boot camp instead.

For a beach bohemian like Gregory, boot camp was a special level of hell. Thousands of miles from the sea, his girlfriend or anyone who gave two shits about him, he was worked hard and insulted harder in an effort to inculcate him with the ability to kill another human being. Graduation was a dreadful relief. While he would be freed from this level of hell, it only meant it was time for Gregory to descend to a far different part of the Underworld, the part called Da Nang. Finally, Gregory got to see the ocean - but it only made him sadder, for it was wholly unlike the inviting beaches of home. The waves were terrible for surfing and he didn't have a board. Even if he'd managed to come across one, there were far too many mines in the water.

He knew about Charlie and the Viet Cong. He knew to be afraid of Russians.

What Gregory didn't know, though, was that the jungle held more than one kind of predator.

No one ever told him about the vampires.